YAML object properties - yaml

Question

I am defining code review configuration in YAML. I need to keep the config as compact as possible without explicitly defining xml/json like name value pairs.
- group: Naming convention
severity: medium
rules:
- name: Check API naming convention
type: pattern
element: api.#name
pattern: '.*\-.*\-\d\.\d'
properties:
- exit-on-fail
- skip-and-proceed
- etc.
What I don't like here is defining the tag "properties" to add the actions. Can the actions exist at the object level?

Answer 1

Indentation-wise, they can exist on the object level:
- group: Naming convention
severity: medium
rules:
- name: Check API naming convention
type: pattern
element: api.#name
pattern: '.*\-.*\-\d\.\d'
properties:
- exit-on-fail
- skip-and-proceed
- etc.
This works because YAML sees - as indentation and therefore, this still creates a list as value for the properties: key.
To compactify, you can also write them inline like daggett suggested:
- group: Naming convention
severity: medium
rules:
- name: Check API naming convention
type: pattern
element: api.#name
pattern: '.*\-.*\-\d\.\d'
properties: [exit-on-fail, skip-and-proceed, etc]
Finally, you can put them into your object mapping as long as they do not share a name with any other fields:
- group: Naming convention
severity: medium
rules:
- name: Check API naming convention
type: pattern
element: api.#name
pattern: '.*\-.*\-\d\.\d'
? exit-on-fail
? skip-and-proceed
? etc.
This creates three additional key-value pairs in your object, with the three properties being the keys and the empty string (possibly a null value depending on the YAML implementation you use) being the value. If you do this, you will need to write a custom constructor to load this into a native data structure, because you need to differentiate between the object fields and the actions. How to do this, again, depends on your YAML implementation.